Austin

Sorry I thought it was a free post this week.


I went to Austin Texas this weekend for the Futuristic Problem Solving Conference thing. I wrote a 1,500 word short story called "The Dead Forest Expedition" that won 2nd in the middle division I had to make a story board for the Texas trip. The top three scenario writers got to go and the Problem Solvers. My story board looked really cool but it was more like a model. It was a 3-D dead tree made from black foam board had had a tiny zipline in the branches (that's how they got around the forest in my story) and a tent underneath it with a bird in the tree (to represent the Sandures [a vulture hawk mix]in my book) some feathers and claws on the ground to show a fight in the book between them and the characters and all that on top of some sandpaper to look like it's in the desert where my story is set. The stories had to be futuristic and about desertification or social isolation. Mine was about desertification.
Friday we left at 7 and after an 8 hour bus ride we went to the award ceremony and I got a plaque and we saw the first place peoples movie trailers for there stories. The next day we traded stories but only five people showed up to that while everyone that didn't write a story were writing letters and making pillows for the veterans. Later the problem solvers had to do a skit of there solution to a problem I couldn't join a lower division group and the groups I could join didn't need any more people so I helped to younger group with costumes. They could only use certain stuff like one roll of aluminum foil, one roll of paper towels, eight pipe cleaners, tape, newspaper and stuff like that. One girl was a robot so I had fun with that I did aluminum around her forearms and aluminum foil helmet with duck tape. I also helped with the snowman costume, I did a paper towel strand around her waist and like a shawl around her head that became a necklace thing later on and did with masking tape. That night was the mixer where you trade things from your area, I brought madigras beads they were popular lots of people wanted them but the mixers were split into divisions so no one wanted to go to the middle division mixer but me and I was all alone.
Sunday I woke up at 6:30 and we went to the award ceremony for the teams and the other people. I was kind of annoyed because the medals for scenario writers came in late so after the ceremony we had to go find our medals, they weren't even labeled first, second or third I had to ask my teammate  but it was nice getting a plaque and a medal. After that there was the long ride back to Baton Rouge we stopped at a DQ and sonic for lunch and Cicis's pizza for dinner and got back at 9:00 I was tired but it was a lot of fun.